An explosives-packed ambulance blew up in a crowded area of Kabul on Saturday,one of the biggest blasts in recent years, that killed at least 95 people and wounded 158 others.
This is the second deadly attack of the Taliban terrorist group in Kabul during a week. This attack, as usual, triggered chaotic scenes and incited the public anger at the government and security institutions as failing to ensure the public security.
The question that may raise here, is why the terrorist groups attack on the public spaces? What Strategic objectives they achieve by these attacks?
As our experience show, these threats not only endanger public spaces, they also have serious implications on the private innermost workings of everyday people’s psyches. This phenomenon is one of the critical fields of sociologist research and research findings show terrorist attacks can effect everything from the way people think, behave to the way they vote.
Many researchers have documented the effects of terror attacks on their victims' mental health. And their findings show that survivors most often experience post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression directly. The indirect effects of these attacks, including the stress of an attack can impact people, even in other provinces and other countries. Also, research findings show that just watching news coverage of the attacks can produce "substantial stress symptoms" among the people who did not have any physical connection on the attacks.
In our country, it poses critical questions in terms of the real will of the government to counter the terrorist groups among the people. It acts the as the best tool for the terrorist groups not only distancing people from the government, but also disappointing them from the international community.
Terror Attacks, or the perceived threats from the terrorist attacks, can also make the politics of the people more conservative. Because, the conservatives are motivated by fear in a way that liberals are not. To say that, it makes the people to reserve their attitude due to becoming more socially conservative. It causes people not to peruse their social liberties for security concerns in the aftermath of an attack or due to fearing of going under an attack.
Terror attacks can change the way people view the world. Terrorism attacks are one of the issues that have got the researchers to call for greater access to medical intervention to document the link between the terrorism and anxiety. Though, the long term effects of terror attacks are not always visible, they have changed the way people behold the world.
Terrorist groups maximize their achievements through modern technologies
Whenever there is a terrorist attack in Afghanistan, our social media is full of hatred and criticism of the government in general and the security institutions in specific. No body, doubts that it is the duty of our government to ensure the security of the citizens, including the public spaces and the security institutions is the government’s apparatus to maintain security of all the citizens in the country. However, as it was mentioned earlier, creating a gap between the people and government is one of the most top objectives of the terrorist groups and their regional and tarns-regional supporters. Because, by doing this, they not only weaken our democratic system but also show how their conservative system is effective.
Targeting the public spaces by the terrorist groups has direct and direct implications including anxiety, stress and depression. The terrorist groups use these tactics to disappoint the Afghan people and the international community of improving the situation in the country. Indeed, it is the legitimate right of the people to ask the government to ensure their security and criticize it, if it fails to provide the minimum basic service including the security to therm. However, it is the responsibility of the citizens to keep in mind not to let the terrorist groups to use them as their pressure tools against the government of Afghanistan to ensure the strategic interests of their regional and trans-regional supporters by making the Afghan government make concessions or alter its policies under pressure.